Oracle Corp chose to add to yesterday’s crowded agenda with a raft of electronic commerce announcements, in an attempt to catch up with Netscape Communications Corp, Microsoft Corp and other vendors that already have similar server offerings. The dramatically-named Project Apollo is Oracle’s forthcoming merchant server for small businesses to get a presence on the Internet. The Oracle Payment Server, which comes either with Apollo or on its own, offering a variety of electronic payment methods, including CyberCash, VeriFone and First Data. All three have Web cartridges – objects that comply to Oracle’s Network Computing Architecture. VerfiFone’s vPOS merchant software is also to be bundled with Oracle’s Project Apollo and its vGate Internet gateway product will work with Oracle Universal Server. Oracle’s Security Server 1.0 authentication software will be out by the year-end. Meanwhile, Oracle has also inked electronic commerce-related deals with Hewlett-Packard Co and Quark Inc. Quark and Oracle will integrate QuarkXPress and QuarkImmedia – the recently released multimedia delivery package – with Oracle WebServer and Universal Server. The first project, code-named Martini, is a database connectivity tool to link QuarkImmedia to Universal and WebServer. Martini is then expected to be joined with the Project Apollo merchant server so transactions can be performed from within the QuarkImmedia Viewer. Oracle and HP will integrate WebServer and the Web Request Broker API with HP’s VirtualVault security package by early next year (CI No 3,006). The Oracle software will then be the platform for e-commerce applications to be built on top of VirtualVault. Finally, Oracle promised that its entire applications line will be Web-enabled and integrated with Project Apollo by the end of next year.
